House members in the next Congress could get Apple’s iPhone as their newest communication gadget.
The Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the communications systems for the House, has begun testing a small number of iPhones within its ranks to see if they are compatible with the working needs of lawmakers and staff.
“The reason we’re trying them out is because we heard a lot of people wanted the option to have them,” said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the CAO.
The iPhone has garnered tremendous attention since its release in July 2007. In addition to being heralded as one of the greatest modern inventions, it’s received its share of criticism for its touch-screen keyboard and slow connection speeds.
The CAO plans to decide whether to give members the option of using the phones, which are offered exclusively under AT&T contracts, by the beginning of the next Congress in January.
The cell phone of choice in the House is currently the BlackBerry, with nearly 8,200 in active use.
If the CAO decides to offer members the option of using the iPhone, BlackBerrys are likely to remain the primary tool of communication on the Hill. If lawmakers opt for the iPhone over the BlackBerry, they will be required to pay for it out of the Member’s Representational Allowance.
But switching to the iPhone will be a costly investment.
The House’s e-mail is set up in a way that all the messages are delivered via a BlackBerry Enterprise server. That server is not compatible with the iPhone, so the only way people could get their e-mail would be to plug the iPhone into their computer. Because the iPhones would require a new server, the CAO is testing it before making the investment, according to the CAO officials.
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Read Full Story: “After months of delays, Research In Motion on Wednesday finally announced a November 4 launch date in the United States for the BlackBerry Bold smartphone.
Nearly four months behind schedule, the Canadian smartphone maker might have lost momentum. The result is that many customers tired of waiting may have instead opted for the popular iPhone.
‘Hopes for Bold are fading given time-to-market,’ wrote Cowen & Co. analyst Matthew Hoffmann in a note to clients.
RIM had first announced the launch of the 3G phone with built-in GPS, its answer to Apple’s iPhone, in July. That came around the time Apple was releasing the iPhone 3G. But the launch was postponed until August because of battery life issues and overheating problems, and then it was postponed again.
RIM tries to justify the delay with mentions of the detailed attention given to the product.
‘The development of the BlackBerry Bold smartphone was an ambitious undertaking, and we focused intensely on the things that are most important to mobile customers,’ said Mike Lazaridis, RIM’s president and co-CEO, in a statement.
Wall Street took notice of the delay, and its concerns have reflected on the company’s shares, which have plunged in recent months–the stock lost nearly half its value in October.
Investors appeared displeased Wednesday by the news. In midday trading, shares plunged $3.49, or 6.9 percent, at $47.04.
While the Waterloo, Ontario-based company was intensely focusing on things ‘important’ to mobile customers, Apple hurried and stole the show.
Apple sold 6.9 million units of its 3G touch-screen phone compared with 1.1 million in the year-ago quarter, the company said on Tuesday, when it announced its fourth-quarter financial results.
RIM sold 6.1 million BlackBerry devices during the same period.
‘We sold more phones than RIM,’ Steve Jobs, rubbing salt in the wound, said on the conference call.”
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Apple has ordered a recall of its ultracompact USB power adapters.
The adapters, originally packaged with the Iphone 3G, apparently contain flimsy metal prongs that are susceptible to snapping.
According to Apple, the broken prongs could “remain in a power outlet, creating a risk of electric shock”.
The flawed adapters were reportedly sold in the U.S., Japan, Canada, Mexico and South America. Club Cupertino recommended that customers in the affected countries stop using their adapters “immediately” and exchange them for new ones. The company also confirmed reports of “detached” prongs but emphasised that they had caused no known injuries.
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September 22nd, 2008 in
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It is official, T-Mobile, Google’s long-time mobile partner, will announce the first Android Smartphone, the HTC Dream, next week during a press conference in NYC and possibly during a Google Developer’s day held in Munich, Germany on the same day.
Techcrunch is saying that the device will cost USD 200 -on a two-year contract with T-Mobile - although some say it could go down to USD 149 - with the smartphone costing USD 400 when purchased alone; the blog also carries the screenshot of a T-mobile US page which puts time of launch at 10:30am.
A device that looked lilke a HTC Dream was also on display yesterday to a Google Developer Audience in Wembley, London.
The phone will almost certainly come with a tactile screen, complete with a trackball (just like the Blackberry), a QWERTY keyboard, a digital camera, a full array of Google applications including Chrome and assisted GPS functionality.
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Google used its London Developer Day on Tuesday to show a late build of its Android mobile operating system in an event that suggests continuing resistance to the platform. Using what’s now largely accepted as a prototype of the T-Mobile G1, Android chief Michael Jennings demonstrated the phone’s full HTML browser as well as its version of Google Maps and the accelerometer, which can affect both the operating system as well as specific programs.
The atmosphere at the event was nonetheless apprehensive, according to anecdotal reports from the British event. Although every developer at the presentation was aware of Android, only a handful of “two or three” were actively creating programs for the software, with most described as hesitant to write code for the device versus the iPhone. So far, only T-Mobile has elected to carry an Android phone in the US while Verizon and others have so far expressed just initial interest.
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September 17th, 2008 in
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When it comes to surfing the Internet, playing games or watching movies on the road, a laptop can be too big and a smartphone too small. That’s why some tech heavyweights have been working on a device that falls in between.
The gadget — essentially a handheld computer — has about the same processing power as a laptop but in a considerably smaller size. Like a smartphone, it can connect to the Internet while out on the road, but it offers a bigger screen and the ability to display Web sites that most smartphones can’t.
A new generation of the devices, sometimes called ultra-mobile personal computers, or UMPCs, is scheduled to hit stores this fall and has some consumers salivating.
Pat Merg, a program manager at toolmaker Snap-on and a self-described techie, tested out a Samsung UMPC demonstration unit two years ago and is eager to own one. Merg, who at 6 feet, 5 inches is a big guy, finds his smartphone too small to take notes on and his laptop too big to use easily on an airplane.
The UMPC, though, “is a perfect-size device,” said Merg, of San Jose, Calif.
But technology analysts are skeptical that most consumers are like Merg. The technology industry has been trying to market UMPC-like gadgets ever since Apple debuted the Newton 15 years ago, but consumers haven’t embraced them.
“It’s been proven over and over and over again that the world doesn’t want such a device,” said Bob O’Donnell, an analyst at technology research firm IDC. “I see no reason why that’s changed.”
But backers of the new devices, like Intel, say they’ll find a mass market among consumers who are used to using the Internet for entertainment or to connect with friends and who increasingly expect to do that while away from their desktop computers.
“The market potential is huge,” said Pankaj Kedia, who is helping to organize the company’s handheld-computing effort.
Microsoft kicked off development of the latest version of handheld computers two years ago with its “origami” project, but it never really caught fire with consumers.
More recently, Intel has been working to refine the idea with its Mobile Internet Device platform built around some new, low-power processors.
Intel envisions that manufacturers will develop at least four different types of such gadgets: some for entertainment, some for navigation, some for communication and some as general office devices, replacing laptops.
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Nokia concept phones are nothing new and neither are unrealistic representations of devices that some of us would wish to exist.
Nokia N-XT is yet another concept, but this one seems quite realistic. And, interestingly enough, it was created out of disappointment. Of what? you might ask.
Well, the designer of N-XT, Chris from Symbian Freak, thinks that Nokia doesn’t actually know what gadget freaks really want from a new Nseries smartphone. So he came up with the N-XT. Which, he says, is made public as an open source idea that the Finnish manufacturer can use for creating an upcoming Nseries multimedia computer.
This handset should come as the ultimate Nseries. It is designed to incorporate a display that can both slide and swivel, turning the N-XT into a device that might be called a smart-video-photo-projector-phone.
The capabilities that Nokia N-XT should have could make it not only the best Nokia ever, but also one of the best mobile devices, regardless of brand. And to convince you of this, here are the main features of the concept:
4.1 inch full-touch display with a Wide-VGA resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and 16 million colors
Symbian S60 5th Edition Touch interface
8-way D-pad
quad-band WCDMA connectivity
8 MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens, optical zoom, auto focus, face detection, xenon flash & dual-LED flash and video recording (WVGA at 30fps)
Dedicated graphics processor unit (GPU)
Accelerometer
A-GPS and compass
Built-in DLP 720p projector
Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Audio & Video players
FM radio and FM transmitter
3.5mm audio jack
24GB of internal memory plus microSDHC support
1,800 mAh battery
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Google is everywhere, with its ubiquitous Web search engine, Google Maps for navigation, Google Docs online office suite, Google Checkout shopping and most recently, Google Chrome Web browser. Next up: Google’s Android operating system for mobile phones, likely to debut in the weeks ahead.
The first mobile device built around Android will be carried by T-Mobile in a still-unnamed handset designed by Taiwanese smartphone powerhouse HTC. The Android phone will go up against Apple’s iPhone, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and a host of devices powered by Nokia’s Symbian and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating systems. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
While every market Google has entered is highly competitive, none may be more so than the mobile phone market, specifically the market for smartphones, which can handle e-mail and Web surfing.
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Symbian-based phones s led in worldwide market share for smartphone mobile operating systems, with 57.1 percent of sales in the second quarter of this year, according to Gartner Research.
That likely reflects Nokia’s status as the world’s largest cell-phone maker. Next in line were Research In Motion, 17.4 percent; Windows Mobile, 12 percent; Linux, 7.3 percent; Apple’s Mac SO X, 2.8 percent; and Palm, 2.3 percent. Another 1.1 percent included Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.
In the United States, Research In Motion’s mobile operating system dominates the smartphone market, with 41 percent, according to a February 2008 report by Canalys consulting, with Apple capturing 28 percent, Windows Mobile, 21 percent, and Palm, 9 percent.
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September 15th, 2008 in
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Given Apple’s super-secretive ways, it’s quite a shock to find a company engineer disclosing something about the iPhone’s future innards on a public social networking site.
Wei-han Lien, the senior manager of Apple’s chip team, dished out the morsel on LinkedIn, saying he’s busy at work crafting an ARM processor for the next-generation iPhone.
While it’s a minor revelation, Lien’s statement would confirm what many have expected ever since Apple acquired chip start-up PA Semiconductor in April for close to $300 million.
PA Semi had assembled an all-star cast of chip engineers, including Lien, and Apple confirmed that it bought the company for that talent. In a June interview with The Times’ John Markoff, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs went one step further, saying the PA Semi team would work on designing brand-new processors for future iPhones and iPods. The only question was which kind of processors.
The current iPhone includes ARM processors, which are very common in the mobile device industry. ARM Holdings is a British firm that licenses out its processor designs to other companies, who tweak the chips to suit their needs. While Apple refuses to confirm it, the company uses ARM processors made by Samsung in the iPhone, according to numerous analysts.
By developing its own ARM variant, Apple could create a processor that meets the specific needs of the iPhone and iPod, building support for functions such as the touch screen or scroll wheel into silicon and possibly savings on costs by reducing the number of processors needed in each device. In addition, Apple’ will be able to maintain tighter controls on who knows what about its future products by disposing of an outside chip supplier.
“They could put software accelerators on there or maybe do something like a graphics engine,” said Fred Weber, the former chief technology officer of Advanced Micro Devices and current chief executive of memory specialist Metaram.
Such a move, however, comes with challenges.
“You are taking on that internal risk of making sure this design goes well,” said chip analyst Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group. “Even with a good team, there’s always a risk that things will be late and delay the release of something like a new iPhone. By outsourcing that part, you have the opportunity of going to another company if the first cannot deliver what you need.”
The construction of a bespoke mobile chip sees Apple returning to its historical roots. For years, Apple relied on more specialized processors from I.B.M. and Motorola rather than using the more common Intel processors adopted by the major computer makers. It eventually abandoned that strategy in 2005 and moved over to Intel chips, leaving Apple’s software as the only major difference between its machines and rivals’.
The engineers at PA Semi specialized in crafting processors with strong performance and very low power consumption. Before shifting to Intel chips, Apple flirted with the idea of placing the PA Semi processors, which were similar in architecture to the I.B.M. and Motorola chips, into its laptops and desktops. PA Semi officials were, in fact, shocked when they learned in the press of Apple’s decision to go with Intel. Apple’s choice crippled PA Semi’s business overnight and forced it to go after new markets such as networking and storage gear.
While hunting for new customers, PA Semi also managed to attract the attention of military equipment suppliers who were intrigued by the low-power qualities of PA Semi’s chips. (They consume less than 20 watts apiece.)
People familiar with the Defense Department’s intentions say that PA Semi chips are set to go into missiles, computers in fighter jets and surveillance equipment.
“By all accounts, the PA Semi chip is meritorious,” said Will Strauss, an analyst with Forward Concepts. “There really was nothing else quite like it.”
When Apple bought PA Semi, it had no intention of morphing into a military supplier. The Defense Department, however, received push-back from suppliers who had already committed to long-term designs based on the microprocessor. These equipment makers urged the Pentagon to pressure Apple into continuing to supply PA Semi’s chips for several years, according to people familiar with the negotiations, who declined to comment on the record because of Pentagon restrictions. Apple eventually caved.
“We are extremely confident and pleased with the direction of PA Semi’s silicon availability,” said Bret Farnum, a vice president at Extreme Engineering Solutions, which makes specialized computing systems, some of which go to military suppliers. “We have many customers that are going to continue to deploy it for the next four to five years.”
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